


forgiveness

by schuylering



Series: gravity i never learned [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:18:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5411357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schuylering/pseuds/schuylering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>His hand is on hers in what must be an unconscious gesture; he's been careful not to touch her, since. But she finds she doesn't mind it, the comfort of his palm, warm and dry, covering her fingers. She wonders if that makes her weak, if she's pathetic for thinking that after all he's done to her. She wonders if she would be better off if she was more like Angelica, steadfast in her anger and unwilling to forgive.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> first: warnings for hospitals/hospitalization and reference to mental illness
> 
> second: if i get my shit together this will become a series, but as is we're pretty much diving in head-first. so, some stuff to know if you want more context for this au:
> 
> \- alex and eliza only ("only") have five kids: philip (18), angie (16), james (14), william (12), and beth (6). i messed with names because kudos to people who can write about two different people named alexander who both have the same nickname but i could just see that headache waiting to happen.  
> \- the reynolds fiasco happened about a year before this fic; hamilton revealed the affair by making a blog post about it, so any references to "the post" are to that.  
> \- angelica lives in new york, not london, at this point.  
> \- this is more pedantic than anything, but the hamiltons have two homes, one in new york and one in d.c. alexander had been living alone in the d.c. house while eliza and the kids lived in the nyc apartment, post-pamphlet (post-post?), then at some point eliza & kids moved back to the d.c. house and alexander got an apartment. he talks to the kids a lot and sees them on weekends sometimes but eliza pretty summarily kicked him out and everything's been super weird all around.

The call comes late, when he should already be home but he has one more thing—one more page to write—but all other thoughts leave his head when he picks up. _Your son, Philip Hamilton—E.R.—gunshot wound—_

He's at the hospital in minutes, bursting through the doors. He gets directed to the right place, he's running flat out—and there's his son, on a gurney.

"Philip," he says, half to himself. He rushes over; the nurses next to Philip glare, he thinks. "Philip?"

"Dad?" Philip sounds surprised and a little out of it. Pain meds. Good. Hopefully he isn't—

"Yeah," Alexander says, "yeah." One of the nurses says something, and they begin wheeling Philip down the hall. Alex jogs to catch up.

"Dad—" Philip says again.

Alexander shushes him. "It's going to be okay," he says. "Don't talk, just—it's gonna be fine."

Behind him, vaguely, like a dream, he hears the rapid-fire _clickclickclick_ of heels on the scrubbed linoleum, Eliza's voice crying, "Philip—!" She's at his side in a moment, holding tight to Philip's hand, careful of the needles and wires. "Philip," she says again, softer.

"Mom?" Philip asks, hardly more than a whisper. Eliza smiles, and Alex marvels at that: watching them, it's like she creates her own private world between her and their son, safe and secure in the midst of the panic and rush around them. He leans forward unconsciously, wanting a part of it even as he knows he isn't, anymore. "I'm sorry," Philp's saying now, and Eliza's shaking her head firmly.

"No," she says. She crying but still smiling, comforting. "No, don't be sorry, never be sorry. You're going to be all right."

"Sir," one of the doctors says, "ma'am, we're got to get him prepped for surgery. If you could back away." 

They're at a door; Alex had hardly realized they were stopped. Eliza nods without looking away from Philip, leans in to kiss his cheek and whispers, "I love you." And then, almost to herself, "You're going to be fine," like a benediction, before to lets go of his hand, steps back to let the doctors wheel him away.

Alex watches the mob of doctors and nurses disappear him behind a door, and then he stares at the door, unable to look away. It feels like the inside of him has gone numb, heart and stomach and lungs, unwilling to feel anything if it's going to feel like this.

"They said on the phone," Eliza says from next to him, "they said he was involved in a shooting."

He finally looks at her; she's staring at the door too, the door that's Philip's behind, alone and hurt. "Yeah." He clears his throat; the words don't seem to be coming right. "That's what they told me, too."

She turns to stare at him now. Her face is streaked with tears but her jaw is set, her eyes clear. "Do you know what happened?" she asks.

"Eliza—"

"Did you know about this?" she asks. 

He doesn't know how to explain, but he can't lie to her. "Yes," he admits, "but—"

She shakes her head, wordless and disbelieving. "No," she says, "don't you dare try to explain yourself to me right now. Don't you dare."

He shuts his mouth. He wants to try; he needs to say something, apologize and explain and make her understand. "Eliza—" he says.

"What did I just say?" she says, eyes flashing, damning.

"I'm sorry," he tells her. "I'm sorry."

She just stares at him, expressionless. For a moment he thinks he's gotten somewhere, that her eyes will soften like they used to and she'll say _I know_ and that they'll wait out these next hellish hours side by side, together.

But that doesn't happen; her face stays hard and set. "That's not enough," she tells him, and turns from him, walks away.

*

Once the police leave the waiting room is silent, quiet. Eliza sits on one of the hard plastic chairs, her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands; she'd taken of her heels and her nyloned toes curl, cold on the linoleum floor. Alex won't sit down, pacing the far side of the room back and forth, back and forth. She wants to scream at him to stop, wants to scream at him for a thousand reasons. There's a small awful part of her, too, that wants to reach for him, tell him to sit down beside her. Wants him to hold her and tell her it's going to be all right, wants to be that girl again who would believe him.

Instead she's a woman who's cried herself out of tears, who can't stop thinking about her oldest son pale and bleeding in front of her. She needs to call the other kids, needs to find someone to stay with them. She needs to call her sisters. She needs to—

She can feel herself slipping, tight bounds of control fraying from around her. She can't do this right now, though, she has things to do. Her kids. Her kids need her.

She sits up, takes her phone out of her bag and calls home. Alexander's still pacing, eyes fixed somewhere on the floor ahead of him.

"Mama?" James's voice says on the other end of the line.

"James?" she asks, surprised. It's usually Angie's job to answer the phone. "Hi, love. Where's Angie?"

"In her room," James says. "She won't come out."

Eliza didn't think she could be more scared, more worried, but suddenly she is. She remembers back to when Angie was twelve and wouldn't get out of bed for a week; to just six months ago when Philip left for college and she stopped going to school. 

"Is Philip okay?" James asks her, quieter. She had gotten the call just after she'd gotten home, rushed out again with barely an explanation, telling Angie to look after all of them. She feels terrible about it, even worse when she hears James's small scared voice. It's been at least an hour. She should've called sooner.

"He's going to be fine," she tells him, because he can't say anything else: not only to James, not even to herself. "He's with the doctors now," she says, knowing James is old enough to get more detail – surgery, bullet wound – but somehow unable to say it out loud.

Luckily, James accepts it with just an "Okay." He says, "Will and Beth want to talk to you." She can picture them, sitting at the table, hanging on every word of James's half of the conversation.

"I want to talk to them too," she says. "I love you. And James – try and get Angie to eat something, okay?"

"We made mac'n'cheese for dinner and I asked if she wanted some," he tells her. "She said no."

"All right." She sighs. "Do you still have Easter candy left?"

"Maybe."

She almost smiles. "See if she'll come out for some chocolate. Or see if she wants to watch a movie with you guys, okay?"

"Yeah," James says. 

"Thank you," she says. "I love you, James."

"Love you too, Mom."

There's a pause, and then Will's voice. "Hi. Mom."

"Hi, Will." She talks to him for a few minutes, gives him the same assurances that Philip will be fine, he's with the doctors, they're good doctors. By the time she's handed off to Beth, Alexander seems to have noticed that she's on the phone; he stops pacing, looking over at her and mouthing, _the kids?_

She nods. He mouths, _can I—?_ and gestures toward the phone.

She nods again. That had been a rule she'd made for herself after the post, after everything had come to light. The kids got to decide what their relationship to their dad was, not her, and they had all chosen him, called him regularly and visited him on weekends he didn't have to work. She wished she could say she didn't understand.

She says to Beth, "Hey, your dad's here. Do you want to talk to him?"

"Yes!" Beth says earnestly. Alone out of the kids, the events of the last year had largely gone over her head, something Eliza's exceedingly grateful for.

"Okay," she says. "Here he is, angel." She holds out the phone, and Alex steps closer and takes it from her hand.

"Hi, baby girl," he says, and smiles at whatever she says in return. He sits down across from her as he talks to their children; he seems to be getting passed around in reverse order, Beth to Will to James. He tells them the same thing she did – she wonders if he had been listening to her more intently than she'd thought. 

He says goodbye to James, and hands the phone back to her. They sit silent for a moment, before he says, "James says Angie won't leave her room."

"I know."

He looks at her, helpless. "I thought that was—that was years ago."

"I happened again," she tells him, rubbing two fingers over her temple. "When Philip left for college. She wouldn't go to school."

"But," he says, and he seems at a loss. "She was there when we dropped him off. She was fine."

Eliza shrugs tiredly. "And then we went home, she went up to her room and laid in bed for three days."

"Fuck." Alex rubs his hands over his face. "I didn't know."

"I know."

"You should've called me," he says, "I could've—done something, I don't know, anything."

"Like what?" Eliza asks, not even trying to be cruel, just—tired. "You were busy."

Alex looks pained. "I'm always busy," he says. "I can still—" He stops. 

She wants to know what he was going to say, but at the same time she's glad he seems to have stopped himself. She can imagine: _I can still be a part of this family_ , when he had been the one—

She looks down at the phone in her hand. She doesn't want to be having this conversation, doesn't want to be having these thoughts. She says, "I need to call my sisters."

He nods, giving up the conversation without a fight, and it makes her wonder at how guilty he really must be. 

She dials Angelica first, who picks up with her usual, "Hey, girl."

"Hi." She wants to say more, but her throat seems to have closed up: she finds herself alarmingly close to crying. She shuts her eyes, opens them again.

"Eliza?" Angelica asks. She already knows something's wrong, has always known her and Peggy like her own self. 

"Philip's in the hospital," she says, the words only making it out of her in a whisper, but Angelica must still be able to hear her because there's a slight gasp of breath, like someone had the wind knocked out of them. 

Eliza explains, as much as she can. She tries not to catch Alexander's eye; she thinks she should've gone somewhere else to make the call, probably. 

"I'm on the next flight out," Angelica says firmly. "I'll be there in a few hours."

Eliza doesn't have the wherewithal to protest, say what about work or what about John; instead she says, "Thank you," and she can feel the tears coming again, making her voice weak and thready. 

"Shh," Angelica says, like she used to when they were little. She doesn't say it's going to be all right, could never lie to her even when most people would've. Instead she says, "I'll be there soon," a promise she can keep. "I love you."

"I love you too," Eliza says again, blinking back tears. "Thank you."

They hang up, and Eliza can't seem to stop the tears anymore. She covers her mouth with her hand, like she could somehow keep them inside, but she can't. A sob tears through her.

"Eliza?" She looks up and Alex is there, kneeling in front of her. He looks desperate, helpless: there are tears in his eyes, too. He hates it when she cries. 

"I'm sorry," she whispers. God, she needs to pull herself together. The thought only makes her cry harder.

"What can I do?" he asks her, almost pleads with her. "Eliza—"

His hand is on hers in what must be an unconscious gesture; he's been careful not to touch her, since. But she finds she doesn't mind it, the comfort of his palm, warm and dry, covering her fingers. She wonders if that makes her weak, if she's pathetic for thinking that after all he's done to her. She wonders if she would be better off if she was more like Angelica, steadfast in her anger and unwilling to forgive. 

She doesn't know. But everything is so awful right now, their son hurt so badly; she can't think about it, has time to worry if she's doing the right thing later. For now, she turns her hand over so she can lace their fingers together, familiar and comforting, still.

Alex looks up at her, eyes wide. Shocked. "Eliza?"

"Please," she says, "don't," not sure what she's asking for. A grace period, maybe. A time out, as silly and childish as that sounds, from the defense she's kept up against him. She lets her tears subside into small hiccups, forehead pressed against their caught fingers.

She lets Alex sit next to her, their hands still clasped. She gets herself together enough to call Peggy, who promises too to be there as soon as she can. Then they just sit, quiet, unable to anything but stare blankly at the opposite wall. It's almost one in the morning, her phone tells her: in here everything is static, bright, unforgiving.

An hour later she gets a text. "It's Angelica," she says quietly. "I'm going to go meet her at the front desk."

Alexander nods. She lets go of him, puts her discarded shoes back on. The hospital is still this time of night, or at least in this moment. She follows the signs to the lobby, where she sees Angelica arguing with the attendant at the front desk.

"Angelica," she says, and her sister looks up, immediately drops whatever she was saying to the attendant and rushes over to her, wraps her in the kind of hug that's always made Eliza feel so safe, her sister's strong arms around her better than the best armor.

"I'm so sorry," Angelica says against her hair. "I'm so so sorry."

Eliza nods, wordless, against her shoulder. They stay that way for a full minute before Eliza can bear to let go; when she does she's wiping away tears again.

"Have you heard anything yet?" Angelica asks as Eliza leads her back toward the elevators.

Eliza shakes her head. "He's still in surgery. We're just. . .waiting."

Angelica nods. "How are the other kids?" 

"Scared," Eliza says. "I need to call someone to check on them, I didn't know—but we called them earlier—"

"Hey, it's okay," Angelica tells her. "I'll call your usual girl once it's actually a reasonable time of day, okay? And I'll check in on them. Don't worry about it."

"Okay," Eliza says, grateful to just let Angelica handle it.

"It your husband here?" Angelica asks next. Not _Alexander_ or _Alex_ , but _your husband_.

Eliza nods. "He got the same call."

Angelica doesn't say anything, but that alone lets Eliza know what she's thinking. They take the elevator back to the right floor, and Eliza leads the way through the hallways, back to the waiting room.

Alexander's sitting the same place she left him, eyes closed and his head tipped back against the wall, but she knows he's not asleep. He sits up when he hears them approaching, and Eliza can't help but think he could use the rest. He always looks tired, has looked tired since the first day she met him, but it's almost always subsumed beneath his enthusiasm for something, his drive forward. Now he just looks tired, and even despite herself it saddens her.

"Angelica," he says, wary.

"Alexander," she answers coolly. They sit down on the plastic seats.

They stay silent, and it's a longer silence this time. Eliza tries not to let her mind wander, tries most of all not to think about her oldest son somewhere in the depths of this hospital. Every few minutes she thinks she hears someone coming, thinks that that someone will be there to tell her that Philip is—

And then, finally, she isn't just imagining things: a lab-coated doctor walks into the waiting room, says, "Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton?"

She leaps to her feet, and Alexander does the same across from her. Angelica stays in her seat as they rush forward, giving them room, Eliza knows, and is grateful. "What's happening?" Alex asks the doctor. "Philip? Is his okay?"

"The surgery was successful," the doctor tells them, and Eliza can feel her body sag in relief, like letting out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "We still need to watch for infection, but it looks like he's going to be fine."

"Can we see him?" Alexander asks, and he sounds like he's going to cry again. 

"In just a few minutes," the doctor tells them. "Someone will come and get you."

Eliza nods; for once, Alexander's words seem to have dried up. The doctor leaves, and Alex turns to look at her with tears in his eyes, looking—not happy, but like he's been given something back, been given a second chance. Eliza doesn't know how to untangle what she feels except that she's so glad: the sun has come up: the worst thing she can think of hasn't come to pass.

Without having to think about it she wraps her arms around Alexander, clutching him tight. His arms come up around her without hesitation, and like that they cling to each other, grateful.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr @ [schuylering](http://schuylering.tumblr.com/)


End file.
